NEW PHASE of the CONTROVERSY.

405

men the enjoyment of every natural right, as well as to promote the greatest happiness of each in the possession and exercise of such rights."

The House of Representatives of the legislature of Maryland, early in 1842, passed a resolution the tendency of which would be to drive from Maryland or reduce to bondage free negroes. The bill was entitled "An Act for the Better Security of Negro Slaves, and Promoting Industry and Honesty among the Free People of Color." Dr. Bond, who had written so vigorously and relentlessly against the abolitionists, and who was a native of that State, denounced the movement of the Slave-holders' Convention as "beyond the ordinary evil and wickedness of men," and exclaimed, "To our brethren we say, and to all who fear God we say, you are released. The Slave-holders' Convention has taken off your strait-jackets. The questions which we were told it was dangerous to discuss are now forced upon us by those who conjured us to be silent for the sake of mercy and humanity; and, with the blessing of God, we will discuss them to the heart's content of the Slave-holders' Convention."

44

The columns of the Christian Advocate" were now opened editorially to the discussion of slavery. Bond discussed two questions: "Ought the General Conference to enact a rule of discipline by which all slave-holders, whatever be the peculiar circumstances of the case, shall be expelled from the communion of the church?" and " If it be admitted that there are circumstances which will justify a Methodist in holding slaves, then, whether it is possible to make a rule which, while it will reach all others, shall spare those exempt cases." He maintained the negative, but allowed the Rev. Robert Boyd to publish two articles on the other side. In Bond's reply he expressed modified antislavery views. This led to severe criticism

of his attitude in the "Southern Advocate." It was also condemned by resolution in various Quarterly Conferences in Georgia and Alabama. To these he replied that extreme views on the Southern side were as dangerous to the common welfare as abolitionism; that the views then uttered in the South "would leave us without hope of a better state of things; for slavery must not only be endured, but purposely propagated:" adding that should the church require him to advocate or defend the opinion set forth in the resolutions from Georgia and Alabama, he would resign as editor; and should the church ever cease to testify against slavery as a moral evil, as he had defined that term, he should seek a purer community.'

Aroused to their danger by the threatened establishment of the Wesleyan Connection, the Methodist abolitionists of New England had begun to hold conventions. At a large one held in Boston, January 18, 1843, it was resolved that "slave-holding is sin; that every slaveholder is a sinner, and ought not to be admitted to the pulpit or the communion; that the Methodist Episcopal Church is responsible for slavery within its pale."

A convention held at Halowell, Me., declared that, "from a careful collection of documentary evidence, with other well-attested facts, there are within the Methodist Episcopal Church 200 traveling ministers holding 1600 slaves; about 1000 local preachers holding 10,000; and about 25,000 members holding 207,900 more."

A similar convention at Claremont, N. H., resolved that the "only way to prevent entire dissolution among us as a church is in an entire separation from the South."

"Christian Advocate," vol. xviii. p. 10.

CHAPTER XVII.

BISECTION OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCHI.

THE ninth delegated General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church assembled in the Green Street Church of the city of New York on Wednesday, May 1, 1844, Bishops Soule, Hedding, Andrew, Waugh, and Morris being present. Bishop Roberts had died March 26, 1843, in the sixty-fifth year of his age. Bishop Simpson, who knew him well, speaks of him as "one of the earth's purest and noblest sons."!

The conference convened under a sense of impending disaster, the more depressing because none could forecast its form. The episcopal address was read by Bishop Soule. At made no reference to slavery, but dwelt at length upon the missions among "people of color" in the Southern and Southwestern States, giving thanks to God that "the unhappy excitement which, for several years, spread a dark cloud over our prospects, and weakened our hands, and filled our hearts with grief, has died away and almost ceased to blast our labors." It condemned the treatment of the colored people in those parts of the church where slavery did not exist; pointing out that there were four Annual Conferences without a colored member; eight sthers had an aggregate number of 463, an average

1 "Life of Roberts " (" Lives of Methodist Bishops ").

of less than 60; and that in fifteen-almost half the conferences in the connection, and some of them among the largest in both ministry and membership-the total number of colored members was but 1309. The address continued: "In many of these conferences there is a numerous colored population, and in each of them a very considerable number." It raised the question whether the freedom of the people of color within the bounds of these conferences could be urged as the cause of their not being gathered into the fold of Christ, alleging that such could not be the case, because “in the city of Baltimore alone there are nearly four times the number of colored people in the church that we find in the fifteen conferences referred to; and yet a vast majority of them are as free as they are in almost all of the States embraced in these conferences."

If this was intended to divert the mind of the General Conference from the dangerous subject of slavery, it was not successful. Under the call for reports, petitions, and memorials, Bishop Andrew being in the chair, when the Providence Conference was reached Frederick Upham presented a memorial on that subject. Thereupon Collins, of Baltimore, moved a "committee, to be called the Committee on Slavery, to be constituted of one member from each Annual Conference." Capers, of South Carolina, moved to lay this on the table, but the motion did not prevail, and the committee was ordered, Upham offering communications from six stations, and Benton, from the same conference, adding another; from eight stations in the New England Conference memorials were presented. A memorial of the Maine Annual Conference on the same subject was introduced, while from New Hampshire came distinct memorials and resolutions from thirty-eight cities and towns; western New York sent another; the Black River

INUNDATION OF ANTISLAVERY PETITIONS.

409

On the next day was

Conference another; Pittsburg seventeen; North Ohio ten ; Ohio one; and Rock River one. presented a memorial from Philadelphia relating to the testimony of colored members, and during several days following sixty-six memorials were received; some relating to colored testimony, others to a change of the general rule, others to the appointment of slave-holders to the office of missionary secretary, or as missionaries under the direction. of the parent board.

In the discussion on their reference to the Committee on Slavery, William A. Smith said he was sorry these memorials taught the lesson they did, that there were so many that were rabid on this subject. They of the South could get as many as they pleased of a contrary character, but they had thought proper not to offend the feelings of the conference by adopting such a course; or otherwise they could get them with strong arguments, and abounding with insulting epithets and degrading remarks calculated to arouse the feelings of the Eastern and Northern brethren; but they were above it, superior to it, and would scorn to stoop to so contemptible a method of defending their position. He affirmed that the Southern members had never had a fair hearing; that he had never known but one solitary instance in which they had been calmly and patiently heard, and that was when Dr. Capers addressed them. "They were assailed with cries of Order,' 'Your fifteen minutes are out,' though that had been extended again and again; and thus they were dogged into silence, and the true ground taken by the South had never been fully heard on the floor of that conference."

The appeal of Francis A. Harding, of the Baltimore Conference, was made the order of the day for Tuesday, May 7th. He had been suspended from his ministerial standing for refusing to manumit certain slaves that came